New Edition: Monsters

[CatharzGodfoot]

Frank, characters that deal less damage more often are going to be more effective against a number of weaker characters, just as characters that deal more damage less often will be more effective against bosses. 1 HP foes are just one of the degenerate cases. On the other side we have huge golems with no dodge and massive damage resistance.

[Username17]

Not necessarily. Many mook systems simply give a mook a destruction threshold. And this can make the ideal anti-mook weapon be one of substantial enough size that it always (or nearly always) hits that destruction threshold.

Meanwhile boss killing is about DPS, which could just as easily be all about dropping tiny DOT effects again and again, or flurries of tiny weapons which would never pass the destruction threshold on a mook.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1201164121[/unixtime]]
[*] Rate of Fire is King Whether it's an area of effect or a flurry of blows, multiple attacks are king against Imps. High damage, low rate of fire attacks like Hyperbeam are craptastic.[/list]

That's pretty much how I imagine taking mooks down. A machine gun is good, using the death star laser is particularly inefficient.

The main advantage to 1 hp mooks is that you no longer have to worry about calculating changes to them. Since they die in one hit, they go back to the classical wargame standard of either living or dying, with nothing in between and that makes them a bit easier to handle because you dont' have to number them on a battlemap.

[CatharzGodfoot]

1201423559[/unixtime]]Not necessarily. Many mook systems simply give a mook a destruction threshold. And this can make the ideal anti-mook weapon be one of substantial enough size that it always (or nearly always) hits that destruction threshold.

That would certainly work well for zombies.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I'm thinking of doing a writeup for rakshasa as "nightbreed" a la Clive Brarker's Cabal and In the Flesh. I think that shadowy ab-dead shapeshifters would be a pretty good fit. Is that too much like wraiths? Do we want tigers with their hands on backwards? I like the backwards hands thing, but it seems better suited to a general tell for a shapeshifter.

[Username17]

I do want Palankashas with their tiger heads and backwards hands. And other than that, parts of me want to go ape shit:

Buffalo headed monsters wearing floating crowns of gold.
Praghasa - gluttonous demons with distended bellies, tusks and clawed hands.
Sandhyabala - Night skinned warrior demons who wield weapons made of starlight.
Asara - brutal elephant headed monster with a single cyclopic eye.
Anusara - donkey headed monsters.
Mandaha - sun eating winged monsters with horns and teeth sharp, but out of place.
Ravana - Hundred handed king of the demons.

---

Asura should have a lot of giants and a lot of cannibals as well. One thing I'm certainly thinking about is having the Dakini and Asrapa be folded into the Djinn on account of being Red.

-Username17

[Orion]

Can we have corrupt hippo-men as a monster of Yama?

[Username17]

1204240249[/unixtime]]Can we have corrupt hippo-men as a monster of Yama?

I had originally thought of going Indian mythology for Rakshasa, Naga, Asura, and Ghandarvas. With Arabic mythos for Djinn, Persian mythos for Spenta, and Sumerian/Egyptian mythos for Sphinxes.

But sure, we can mix it up a bit. Throwing in some Egyptian mythos into he Spenta, some Aryan stuff into the Djinn, some Aztec stuff into the Rakshasa. There's lots to draw upon. I just don't really want to use European Christian or Nordic stuff because it's over done.

-Username17

[Crissa]

I still get centaurs tho, right?

-Crissa

[CatharzGodfoot]

1204266544[/unixtime]]I just don't really want to use European Christian or Nordic stuff because it's over done.

Hindu without Nordic? Is that even possible?

1204268117[/unixtime]]I still get centaurs tho, right?

Yeah, they're under the heading "Gandharvas".

[Username17]

Hindu without Nordic? Is that even possible?

Sure. Your giants look like this:


And not like this:



Also, the Gremlins from Heroes V are bad ass:


-Username17

[Koumei]

That gremlin looks awesome. The Hindu giant... looks dumb. Unfortunately, while I understand that you want to leave the European stuff behind, due to it being overdone, I think some things are just plain better when Nords come up with them.

[Cielingcat]

The Hindu giant doesn't look as good 'cause he's a statue and not a drawing.

[Crissa]

So the giants are well-groomed, this is a complaint? They have hundreds of little people working for them, so they don't have to move and potentially crush the hundred of little people's families.

Sounds workable to me.

-Crissa

[JonSetanta]

1204462694[/unixtime]]The Hindu giant... looks dumb.

Well. Seems we have a difference in taste, then.

Looks rather contented bordering on smug to me.
And that's just fine for a magical near-immortal giant dude with many arms.

[Username17]

Thought for the day: Russian Harpies are awesome.

Sirin are harpies who have dark bird parts. They speak with the voices of saints and can tell the future. They trick men into lifelong servitude.

Alkonost are harpies with colorful bird parts who are inherently inspiring.

Gamayun are kind of like Sirin, but with more powerful magic and less gratuitous villainy.

-Username17

[virgil]

I wonder if there's enough information out there on Russian mythology to create a setting for it.

[Username17]

I wonder if there's enough information out there on Russian mythology to create a setting for it.

Sure. If I were doing it I'd center it on stuff like Rusalka and make a game rather like Call of Cthulhu in medieval times. The player characters have to be serious bad asses before they get any magic at all, starting character occupations would look a lot like WFRP (but without crazy bullshit like Pit Fighter or Apprentice Wizard). It would largely be an investigative game, and most of the villains would be humans.

Russian stories make especially good backdrops for haunted house stories. And while Russian mythos has the occasional crocodile with tentacles (seriously), most of the monsters are either empty shells of human skin that murder people in their sleep or cannibalistic young women who are secretly trees.

The basic structure of the campaign would be expected to be:

• The characters wander around and find a village where everything is creepy
• They do some investigative work and find people murdered in grizzly ways.
• They apply some forensics to the situation and track down the problem.
• Some things happen that are really creepy. The snow encroaches and leaves them alone in the dark.
• They may or may not have to fight an irate villager or a real monster.

There aren't a D&D worth of playable races or weird monsters. Probably you just have humans and goblins as the only playable races. And then you bring on the Ravenloft.

-Username17

[Koumei]

That sounds pretty cool.

Also, IIRC half the Iron Kingdoms monsters were based on Russian ones (or seemed that way).

[Username17]

That sounds pretty cool.

It has the advantage of being really fast to write. Since combat is "not the point" you don't need or want a particularly advanced combat system. You don't worry about character speeds, or location, or areas of effect or any of that because it doesn't really matter. Most of the skill set involves Scooby-Dooing so whether or not someone has a good "Close Combat" skill is a matter of choice.

Basically you'd want a mechanic that handles human-level stuff well. So you'd probably mix and match between nWoD and Shadowrun. Basic mechanic is Attribute + Skill in d6s and you look for a threshold of hits. Probably go with Physical, Mental and Social skills, but you combine the Power and Resilience scores because they aren't meaningfully different.

So your stats are Strength and Agility (physical Power and Finesse); Logic and Intuition (mental Power and Finesse); Presence and Charisma (social Power and Finesse). Boom. Done. Skills are probably set up kind of like nWoD, where they don't have a 1:1 correspondence with attributes and there are a finite number of them. The combat system itself should have a soak roll, and probably a triangular damage system like Dead Man's Hand.

Monsters come from "The Cold" or "The Water" or "The Woods." Monsters universally don't like Fire. Iron is quasi magical and counts as being on fire all the time as regards its effects on monsters. Heck, if you leave iron uncovered it illuminates monsters as if it was a torch so you can find monsters in the dark by holding up an iron knife. Witchcraft makes you a monster, so once you start on the path of magic you have to give up iron tools or burn.

It's a very narrative driven game, so the rules don't have to be particularly in depth. Just the setting does. But even then since the characters are playing Cossack drifters, the fine points of the setting can be pretty vague. You're playing Supernatural in Kazakhstan, so it's more about mood than anything else.

And cold. Oppressive, oppressive cold.

Also, IIRC half the Iron Kingdoms monsters were based on Russian ones (or seemed that way).

Yes, a lot of them are.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

And cold. Oppressive, oppressive cold.

Winter outside of California getting to you?

[Username17]

And cold. Oppressive, oppressive cold.

Winter outside of California getting to you?

It's impressive. But the Slavs themselves get really worked up about it in their legends. Death out here is a woman, and she also represents cold. You die metaphorically because the warmth of life is stolen from your body.

I mean, the Ruskies understand how very fucking deadly cold the winters are and it permeates every part of their world view.

-Username17